


A Real Good Bet

by riverlight



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: College, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 22:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3358124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverlight/pseuds/riverlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lardo and Shitty, the early years. Or: how to become friends with Shitty Knight, in three easy steps!</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Real Good Bet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunfair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunfair/gifts).



> For northerndownpour/sunfair, with great appreciation for her enthusiasm for all things CP!

### 1\. Skepticism

The good thing about going to college basically in the same city where you grew up is that it’s no big deal, really, to get there; the day her parents drop her off at Samwell for freshman orientation, they get up, have a leisurely breakfast, and pile into the car (packed the night before, because that’s how Larissa rolls), and it’s such a short trip it’s practically anti-climactic: it’s like a half-hour drive, and that’s including the time they spend inching through Harvard Square because her dad took a wrong turn. Most of Larissa’s friends went a little further afield—well, Shaun went to BU, but otherwise, her crew decided on places like Amherst and Mount Holyoke at least, if not New York—and then there’s Lauren who did early decision at Tulane and Samira who went to UCLA. But Larissa kind of likes the idea of being so close to home: she _likes_ her family, okay, and what’s more, she loves Boston; there are worse things than spending the next four years in a city where she can see plays at the Rep and baseball at Fenway in the same day if she wants. 

Plus, their art department kicks ass, and they gave her a scholarship. What’s not to like? 

So she gets to Samwell, picks up her room key from the harried volunteers staffing tables in Faber, and makes her way to her dorm. Well, house, really: she’s living in the French House, because it seemed like a cool way to meet international students, and also she liked the idea of a smaller, quieter place to live than the big freshman dorms on the east side of campus. Then there’s a flurry of unloading the car (another nice thing about going to school in Boston: she was able to bring basically as much stuff as she could pack, unlike Lauren who headed off to Tulane with two suitcases) and unpacking, and the whole time Larissa has her eye on the clock, because she’s got orientation, and it’s the first real event of her college career and she doesn’t want to miss it. 

In the end she has to chivvy her parents out the door (her mom cries, of course, which Larissa finds baffling; it’s not like she’s never going to see them again, but her mom cried when Vivian went off to UMass too, so Larissa figures maybe it’s just a mom thing), but eventually Larissa promises she’ll call them this weekend if not sooner, and they leave her alone. 

They gave her (or, well, all the freshman, she supposes) a bunch of different options for orientation; most of them were pretty boring (and, ugh, a ropes course? she did enough of that in high school, thanks), but there were a couple of cool-looking ones: one where a group would go volunteer in a soup kitchen in Allston for a couple of days, one that was a tour of Boston’s historical sites (not that Larissa needs to see them again, really, but the part where they’d get to sleep over at Walden Pond appealed to her), one where they’d get to go around town and sample a bunch of ethnic cuisines. Ultimately, Larissa had chosen one entitled “Samwell: The Hidden History,” because she figured she knows Boston pretty well already and liked the idea of getting a glimpse into parts of Samwell that went beyond the official Welcome to Samwell! guide. 

She’s kind of tired, after the hectic morning, but at least the info packet they gave her with her keys seems to imply that they’re only getting together for a quick tour of campus before dinner, so she can handle that, at least. Their first meeting is at 4 pm, at Weber Hall, so Larissa puts on her cardigan and heads out; she only has to ask for directions one time (from a tall black girl who jogs across the quad when she sees Larissa hovering over the big all-weather map outside the biology building) which has got to be a good sign: her first day of high school, she got lost between every one of her classes. 

She’s a little early, but that’s okay: it just gives her a chance to scope out her new classmates. Mostly people are sitting alone, perched on the edge of the benches that are clustered at the foot of the stairs, studiously ignoring each other or staring down at their phones, but there are a couple of people who are looking around interestedly; she catches the eye of one white boy in a Celtics hat, who notices her looking and ducks his head shyly, and exchanges friendly smiles with a girl in jeans and a South Asian tunic who reminds her of Samira, a little bit. 

The group is supposed to be led by a B. Knight, according to the orientation handouts; Larissa looks around, but doesn’t seen anyone wearing anything obviously official, or anything, so she shrugs and leans against the granite balustrade and settles in to wait. 

The cool thing about Samwell so far is that it seems really diverse. For all that Boston’s a pretty diverse city, it’s pretty clearly divided into neighborhoods; she was one of the few Asian kids in her high school. Here, though, she sees people of all kinds: black kids so dark she swears they’ve got to be African, a couple of girls in—what do you call that Muslim veil?—talking in another language she doesn’t recognize, a curvy white girl in a fabulous 1950s-style outfit and red lipstick. It’s really cool. By the time she’d left high school, Larissa had been feeling trapped, ready to leave, ready for the next step in life, and that was one of the reasons she chose Samwell: it kind of feels like she could become anyone, here. 

There’s a white guy coming purposefully across the quad towards their little group, and Larissa focuses in on him: maybe this is the mysterious B. Knight. Except—okay, maybe Samwell’s diversity is taking it too far, because this guy is wearing absolutely _tiny_ cutoff jean shorts like something out of the ’80s, and he has long hair tucked up into a man-bun, and—is that a screen-printed _cat_ on his tee-shirt? Larissa’s all for individual fashion choices and wearing clothes that she likes—god knows she got shit, sometimes, for her refusal to wear whatever the cool kids were wearing—but. Uh. This guy is taking it to new heights. 

“Hey, hey, heeeey, frogs!” the guy says, cheerfully, and Larissa raises an eyebrow. _Frogs?_ “Welcome to Samwell: The Hidden History, or, as I like to call it, All The Secrets of Samwell They Don’t Want You to Know! Anyone not in the right place, speak now or forever hold your peace.” He looks at them expectantly. 

They all exchange glances, but nobody says anything, so the guy grins and rubs his hands together. He’s wearing a Samwell lanyard, Larissa sees now that he’s close enough, and he’s got a name-tag on, but he’s crossed out his name (and scribbled out his first name entirely) and written in “Shitty” in blocky all-caps Sharpie. “The powers that be will tell you I’m named B. Knight,” he says, conspiratorially, pronouncing the initial like Bee. “But I choose to reject the oppressive nature of institutional discourses, so I don’t go by that. You can call me Shitty.”

O-kaaay, thinks Larissa. Great. A weirdo.

But he’s still talking. “I’m a junior, a Women’s & Gender Studies and Political Science double major, and, most importantly, a winger on the hockey team, and it’s going to be my pleasure to show you the secrets of this great campus.” 

He pauses expectantly, and Larissa cringes; she hates this kind of awkward silence. Finally, another kid pipes up. “Mister, uh, Mister Shitty?” he says. “Why’d you call us frogs?”

“Ah!” the guy says grandly. (Larissa resolves right there that she won’t refer to him by name, therefore avoiding the Mister Shitty/Shitty/whatever dilemma.) “Well might you ask. Your first lesson of your Samwell career: freshmen are never called freshmen, only frogs,” he says. “One of the eternal mysteries of this fine institution. Now, are there any more questions?” he says, and sweeps on without really waiting for an answer. “Because it is my sacred duty as an upperclassman to introduce you to all of the many and varied dining halls on campus.” He makes a big ‘after-me’ gesture, and they all fall obediently into a ragged cluster around him, and he sets off across the quad. 

Oh, my god, Larissa thinks. Who _is_ this guy? 

### 2\. Curiosity

Larissa hadn’t expected much from orientation, honestly; Vivian had said hers was boring and she’d had to wait until she got into the theater program to meet people who she actually considered friends, so Larissa had sort of figured it was just a hoop to jump through. Turns out, though, it’s not bad; the girl she’d noticed the first day, the one who’d reminded her of Samira, turned out to be from India rather than Pakistan (“the very tip of the continent,” she’d said, making a triangle shape with her hands and poking at the bottom with a finger), and she’d laughed, delighted, when Larissa’d been able to pronounce her name (“Khyati, like Katie but with an accent”) on the first try. They don’t have all that much in common, honestly, but Larissa kind of thinks they might become friends; they’ve got a coffee date scheduled for the weekend at Drinkwell, in any case, so at least she can say she’s got one kind-of-friend here when she calls her parents this weekend. 

Also, Larissa isn’t ruling out the idea that B. Knight is a total weirdo, but he does know Samwell really well, and they end us seeing some pretty cool stuff: the dorm that’s supposedly haunted by a Civil War-era ghost; a little hidden grove of trees off Lake Quad with an exquisite bronze statue of a woman in the middle, surrounded by benches. Larissa’s favorite, though, is the rare book room in the library; she’s seen illuminated manuscripts before, in pictures, but they’re so much more vibrant in person, it’s amazing. “Whoa,” she says, involuntarily, when the librarian gently uncovers the crumbling page, its deep greens and blues winking out from amidst the complex gleaming swirls of gilt. 

B. Knight shoots her a grin. “Totally swawesome, right?” he says. (He’s told them what swawesome means, though Larissa’s not sure she really understands what the difference is between something that’s swawesome and something that’s just cool.) “It blows my mind that human beings can make things like this, you know?” he says, and Larissa has to look at him thoughtfully, because the B. Knight who’s led them around campus, talking cheerfully and volubly about hockey and Epikegsters and something called the Swallow (“let’s just say being featured is a totally dubious honor”) doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to spend a lot of time thinking about human nature, Women’s & Gender Studies major aside. But he’s looking down at the book with a contemplative expression, so maybe she was wrong. 

Either way, that’s two good things she’s gotten out of orientation: a potential friend and a few glimpses into some really cool new places. She can already tell she’s going to be spending a lot of time in the third floor of the library, curled up in the big chairs under the huge glass dome overhead.

And then there’s a third thing, a couple of days later, after orientation has ended and they’ve all been let loose with the instructions to meet with their advisors and register for classes and make sure to stop by Housing Services if their student cards aren’t working. Larissa has met with her advisor; had a conversation with her about placing out of the intro art classes; met with the head of the Art Department; and registered for English 151: The Modern American Novel, Intro to Macroeconomics (she’s decided to get her requirements over as soon as she can, so she can move on to more interesting classes), Art History 121: Classical Greece to the European Renaissance, and Studio Art: The Human Figure. Her student card works fine, she’s picked up her mailbox key, and she’s met the RA on her floor in the French House: surely, she thinks, she’s done with the logistics?

The only other things on her mental list are signing up for some clubs of some kind, but that she can’t do until the first week of classes when they have the Club Fair, and finding a student job. She finds the prospect of a student job totally scary, for some reason, so she puts it off; but finally she can’t put it off any longer, and girds her loins and sets off to the Career Services office where they have a list posted outside the office door. 

She’s standing there scrutinizing the list and trying to find something remotely interesting (guarding the door of the library? cleaning up the science labs? serving food in the dining hall?) when somebody careens around the corner and bangs straight into her. “Oh—fuck—hey—sorry,” the guy says, stooping to gather up his spilled papers, and then he peers up at her from his squat. “Hey!” he says, with a wide grin. “Larissa, right?”

It’s B. Knight, or, well, whatever his name really is. “Right,” Larissa says, guardedly. She hadn’t thought they’d had enough interaction that he’d actually learned her name. Also, he’s wearing yet another absolutely ridiculous tee-shirt: this one says I HATE DRUGS, in big letters, and then, in smaller letters, between the lines: (running out of) and (in the middle of the night). She almost laughs, but stops herself; she can’t tell if he’s wearing it seriously or ironically. “Uh,” Larissa says. “Sorry. I was just—looking at the list of job postings.” 

He looks her up and down, assessing. Normally, that’d creep her out, but weirdly, in this case it doesn’t seem at all gross, just like he’s trying to get a sense of her. “Uh huh,” he says. “Sucks, right? My first year, I had a job as an assistant in a biology lab. Like, not that I’m at _all_ suited for science,” he says, like he’s inviting her in on a joke, and she thinks, yeah, okay: hockey player, total bro, wearer of tee-shirts with drug slogans on them: probably not the most likely scientist, though on the other hand you never know. “So what do I end up doing? Measuring the size of dead monkeys’ testicles, for eleven bucks an hour.”

This time she can’t help it, she actually does laugh, because seriously: is this guy for real? “You’re shitting me,” she says, and then backtracks. “I mean. Are you serious?”

“Totally serious,” he says, bobbing his head and grinning. “Totally fucking serious, Larissa the artist. Which is why I think you should come be the manager of the hockey team.”

“Because…you used to have to measure monkey balls?” she says, not following. “What?”

He leans against the wall and peers down at her. “No, because the other jobs you can get totally suck, take it from me,” he says. “When I was a frog, a wise upperclassman warned me about not taking shitty jobs and not drinking anything blue and not doing anything that’d get me in the Swallow unless I was wearing a disguise, and now it’s my turn to pass on advice, so: don’t be a dining-hall helper. That way lies death and stultifying boredom.” 

“Uh,” Larissa says, not sure how to respond to this. “Right. But. I’m not even into hockey, so, you know, maybe ask someone more, I don’t know, into sports? Like, at all?” 

“Naw, man,” he says, easily. “You’d be perfect, swear to god. Bet you twenty bucks I’m right.” 

“No bet,” Larissa says, instantly. It’s just possible Larissa is a little competitive. What? She owns it. 

“Let me at least tell you what it’d entail,” he says, persuasive. “No harm, no foul, right? If you’re really not into it, there are plenty of other jobs, fine, but this one’s pretty fucking awesome.” 

“Don’t you mean ‘swawesome?’” she asks, and he grins and makes finger-guns at her. 

“See? You’ll be perfect.” And: what the hell. He seems to know campus pretty well so far; maybe he’s got some secret knowledge about this, too. “Fine,” she says. “Buy me a cup of coffee, then, and tell me about it.” Vivian will shriek when she hears about it, but: whatever. She’s at college now. She can have coffee with random hockey players if she wants. 

And the next morning she goes back to the Career Services office and signs up as hockey manager. What can she say? He was persuasive. 

### 3\. Trust

Larissa doesn’t actually meet any of the hockey team besides Shitty (okay: she caved on the name front) until the weekend after the first week of classes, when the team throws a kegster at their ramshackle, rambling house. (“Why’s it called that?” she’d asked Shitty, over coffee that first time, and he’d grinned and shrugged. “Mystery of the ages; your guess is as good as mine.”) When she shows up, the party’s already in full swing: bass-heavy music pouring out the doors, every window lit up. 

She doesn’t see Shitty anywhere, but Larissa’s never been shy about parties, so she just takes a deep breath, shoves open the door, and heads on into the crowd. 

By the time she finds Shitty, she’s had a drink; by the time he’s introduced her around, she’s had several. “Heyyy, Larissa Dee,” he’d drawled, and draped one big arm around her shoulders to shepherd her around the room. Mostly she has only vague impressions of the guys he’d introduced her to: tall, built, handsome; a blond guy and a black guy having a total bromance; a serious guy who earnestly asked her what she thought of Samwell’s chances this season, to which she’d had to reply that she had no fucking clue (though she phrased it somewhat more diplomatically), and then extricated herself from the conversation. Nice guys, though she’s already figured out they have a tendency to spout incomprehensible hockey slang at the drop of a hat.

It should be weird, being at a party where she knows only one guy, especially since she’s basically surrounded by bros, but it’s actually kind of nice; everyone she’s met so far has been the kind of cheerful, guileless person who sets her at ease, and once Shitty had announced (at top volume) that she’d signed on as the new manager, they’d welcomed her almost effusively. Weird, she thinks, and says as much to the guy she’s talking to, a big guy who she thinks might be the goalie. 

“Well,” the maybe-goalie says, thoughtfully. He has, Larissa notes, really good abs. “Some of us aren’t quite as friendly, but you probably won’t meet them. They’re kind of boring for narrative purposes, you know?” 

“Uh,” Larissa says. “Okay. Whatever, man. I’m just saying.” She’s maybe had too much to drink, because this makes no sense. Then again, it’s really loud in here, so maybe it’s just normal party confusion. She takes a sip of her drink. 

“Also,” the guy—Jansen? Johnstone?—says, peering at her purposefully. “Seems like you’ve had a good week so far, right? You’re liking Samwell?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Larissa says, grateful to be on firmer ground. “For sure! It’s been great. The people seem great, and I’m really excited for classes.”

“Yeah?” the guy says, and, man, has he got a hypnotizing voice, or what? He’d be great on the radio. “That’s great, that’s great. So glad to hear it.” He takes a swig of his beer, and then gestures with his red Solo cup. “It only gets better from here, you know?”

And this whole conversation’s been odd as hell, but suddenly, weirdly, Larissa totally believes it; she’s absolutely convinced. Samwell’s going to be good for her—this job is going to be good. She can’t tell how, but she believes it. 

“Mm,” she says, and clinks her cup against his. “Swawesome.”

END

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Frank Sinatra (who else?): "The Best is Yet to Come." 'Cause Lardo ain't seen nothin' yet...
> 
> (Also, re: the monkey's testicles: my cousin did precisely that as part of his Master's. You can't make that shit up.)


End file.
